Caustic and Spitfire
by zombie chow
Summary: A nonconforming teenaged girl learns the true meaning of "me against the world."  Rating may go up.
1. little white pills

**Prologue  
**_little white pills_

"Hm," my father grunted, and both me and my mother looked up, me from my seat at the table across from her and her from the sink straight to my right. "this crap goin' around seems pretty serious."

It was a typical Tuesday afternoon— my father having his coffee and newspaper at the table as he always did, my mom making a quick breakfast before I headed off to school, and me sitting at the table, glaring vehemently at the tall glass of orange juice just next to my forearm, which rested on the table. Oh, how I hated orange juice. It was orange, the worst color in the universe, it's taste and smell was pungent enough to make my eyes water, and the pulpy texture was gag-worthy. And yet every morning Mom would set a huge glass in front of me, giving me a scary look before ordering to drink it, the consequences in the event I didn't unspoken and unknown. I didn't really want to find out, either.

But orange juice still sucks.

Dad dropped the paper on the table in front of him, looking a bit exasperated. I believed him when he said this sickness we've heard of only through the paper, television, radio, and internet was serious. My father, born Southerner though he was, was a rather rigid man. The funniest things he says are drenched in sarcasm and irony, usually only funny after you think about what he said for a moment or two before realizing, "Oh, that really _was_ funny" after you forced a laugh and rolled your eyes.

… yeah, people really did react that way to my dad's jokes.

He took a sip of his java, calloused fingers curled around the handle of a clean white mug, and then stared directly at me with his cold blue eyes so unlike my own. "What do you think of it, sweet pea?"

I smiled at the nick name, thinking for a fleeting moment if he said that in front of any of my classmates, I would shoot myself. "Sounds serious," I agreed, pronouncing each work carefully so I didn't pick up his Southern accent like I sometimes did. Seriously, we've lived in Manhattan for nearly fourteen years now, and while my mom perfected her English, my dad never dropped his hick-like slur gained from living almost all his life in Mississippi. And it rubbed off on everyone. Real easy, too. _Especially _on me.

"But I don't think it will hit us," I said. "Nothing ever hits us."

I said it with such confidence, with such ease, I didn't recognize myself speaking. Did I just say that? Me? The one who had been struggling with anxiety for the past few months? Did some ghost possess my body and force me to say that? Looking down and then patting myself, I decided that no, I was indeed in control of my own mind, I smiled. The doctor's advice was working. For once, those white-coated idiots did something right.

"We live in New York, sweetie," my mother said, leaning against the counter of the sink. She spread cream cheese on a hot bagel half with her butter knife before setting it down in front of me on a plate. "Lots of people from lots of places, flying in and out. Just wash your hands often, don't share drinks with people, and finish your orange juice."

I grimaced, but obediently took the tall glass of pulpy citrus in front of me with two hands and sucked it down. Torture. This had to qualify as torture. Using the unsaid threat of grounding to make a child force acidic juices down her throat had to be illegal in some country somewhere.

I mulled over her words for a minute as I chugged my drink and slammed it back down on the dark wooden table, earning two pairs of eyes glaring at me. Ignoring them served as my best option. City life wasn't nearly as bad as it was made out to be—it actually was pretty clean, save for the air. Crime existed to the point where it'd be wise to check over your shoulder now and then, but it wasn't much of a problem if you didn't venture into the wrong part of town. But it was still the city, and more than one tragic accident occurs each night. Sometimes in a totally different county, and sometimes so close to home we only avoided it ourselves by the skin of our teeth. The big stuff usually missed us. Content with this information, I took a big bite out of my bagel.

"Aw, I don't think we should be too worried," Dad said, scratching his scraggly goatee. "Sweet pea's healthy, all right, has all her necessary vaccinations and we don't have ta remind her ta shower herself, unlike some parents. Only her medication. Oh yeah, Jacky, remember to—"

"I know," I growled, my mood souring considerably at the mere reminder I _still_ had to take pills. Robotically I pushed myself from the table, my mother and father sharing a look as I marched straight behind me to the refrigerator pressed against the wall next to the counter and stove top, only a few paces away in the cramped kitchen-dining room combo. I stood on my tippy toes and stretched my entire body to reach a medium sized bottle of my medicine set on the edge of the freezer, glancing briefly at the label to confirm it was mine and not ibuprofen.

**JAQUELINE L. MONROE**

Rather impossible to miss, along with the instructions to take _two _tablets, no more, no less, how often to take them and how many are in the bottle. So familiar it hurt my eyes just to look at it anymore. I popped off the lid, picked out two white, slightly flat pills and tossed them in my mouth, holding them in my teeth as I set the bottle on the counter in between the stove and fridge. Then I began aimlessly opening the cabinets above the counters looking for something to wash them down with.

Dad took a long, considering sip from his mug, perhaps sensing the bitterness that seemed to radiate off my body in waves. "How's school?" he asked carefully.

"Okay, I guess," I said the best I could without unclenching my jaw. Mom bustled over to me and produced the unfinished orange juice. She put my hands around it, and I could count every strand of dark hair framing her beautiful Asian face. Rich, mahogany brown eyes that matched my own stared me down through dark eyelashes. I felt really lucky to have my mom's eyes, they were the pretty kind of brown that seemed to have a red tinge in the right light.

Yeah, I love my eyes. I'll admit that. I don't hate everything about myself like some teenagers, but I'm not totally conceited...

… I think. Maybe. Or not, who knows?

I downed what was left of the drink and the little white pills along with it, feeling my face pinch up in a grimace. Orange juice sucks. So does bipolar medication.

Mom was looking me up and down with a dissatisfied look in her eye, and I knew if I didn't leave soon she would begin fussing over how I had cut my hair, how dark my makeup was, how I needed a tan. Yeah, my own mother has said that before. That I need a tan. Ignoring the less than pleasant memory, I touched her arm and kissed her on the cheek, which seemed to soften her up a bit. She mimicked me, planting a wet one on the right side of my face. "Love you," she said.

"Love you, too, Mom." I walked to Tony Monroe, who had set his coffee down and was smiling expectantly at me from his seat. I bent down and repeated the same procedure I had gone through with my mother.

"Love ya, sweat pea," he said, eyes soft. "You take care of yourself at school, now. Don't let no idiot tell ya what ta do."

"Tony, don't say that," my mother scolded. I couldn't resist the urge to roll my eyes. "she's already beginning to resist authority, we don't want to lose complete control over her."

This argument again. Tony telling me I should stand my ground and be my own boss, and Keikoku objecting to that, saying that will get me "no where in the real world." Then Dad would bring up the government and proceed to shoot them down with his whole arsenal of conspiracy theories, say something about teachers not working hard enough for his tax dollars anyway, and shut out mom who insisted there was nothing wrong with the US government, nothing we could do about it, or at least nothing we could do if me and Dad wanted to live in _this _household.

It was always an eyeball-rolling experience. I was smart, I could make good decisions. Before I could get involved in this little spat, I announced, "Bye, Mom and Dad."

"Bye, Jacky. Don't take no shit from no one."

As I stepped off the black and white tile floor to the shady hardwood, left the cheery pale yellow walls of the kitchen for the dark burgundy of the den, the second I had passed through the empty archway leading into the other room I heard my mother's sharp reply of "Don't listen to him!"

* * *

**A/N: Some punk she is, she eats breakfast with her parents. Oh well. **

**Review?**


	2. preppy little tie

**A/N: This chapter was so hard to write like I don't even. I didn't write it out on paper before when I had wrote the second chapter already. This chapter is somehow too slow and too fast at the same time and I rushed it and I wanted it over with and auuugh. So I apologize, this isn't going to be good.

* * *

**

**Chapter One  
**_preppy little tie_

I remembered the day I first held my guitar.

Little puffs of breath formed white clouds in front of my face as I walked along the sidewalk to Stuyvesant High School, reminding me that it was a particularly chilly day for late April, and the day I had decided, God knows why, to wear a skirt. A red, plaid skirt that fell a few inches above my knees and even more above the heeled boots that reached halfway up my calves. With the white button-up shirt, black blazer, and a preppy little tie that hung around my neck, I felt like a schoolgirl. And like a hooker. I also felt really stupid, because my legs were so cold and it was me who decided to trade my tight pants for this little ensemble knowing I had to walk to school each day. I usually got a ride on days like these, but only two of my friends had a car and Jay's phone had been picked up by his mom who said he was very sick, and Demitri was already at the school and was too lazy to pick me up. That had ticked me off, because he was early and I knew he would be twenty minutes late for first period anyway, so I think in my cold-numbed brain I tried to send him a telepathic warning that he had a hard kick coming his way.

As I walked, the memory floated into my head without much warning, but it was a comfortable and happy memory I didn't mind reliving. My guitar was a slick black Washburn KC-70v, with perfect strings, coils, electronics, tabs, everything. It wasn't in a store. My friend Jamie, who was more of a bass player herself, had gotten herself a new toy and was willing to sell the old shredder for four hundred and fifty bucks. The day I got my work permit and a job that didn't involve me being too nice to people I worked around the clock, all of my take home pay going straight into that guitar. After about three and a half months of minimum wage and forced smiles, I had my Washburn, a decent sized amp, and a red leather strap. I remember running home and flying into my room without saying a word to my parents, setting up everything within a flash. The moment my fingers curled around the neck of that guitar and the moment I strummed a few notes there was something like electricity running through my veins and a magic in the air and a soft voice whispering, "Yes, this is right, this is okay."

I played that guitar all weekend almost nonstop. I wasn't very good, my fingers slipped often and my parents banged on my door to complain almost every ten minutes, but I didn't care. It was magic, I knew it was magic. I even gave my Washburn a name— Felix. Such a magnificent instrument could not go without a name, I had decided. But then I began naming all of my old guitar picks, my amp, my strap, and a piece of pocket lint I found, so I was probably just in a really good mood.

But the name Felix stuck.

"A _skirt, _Jacky?" I heard someone fake a gasp, and I snapped my head up from the ground. I had just set one foot into the parking lot of Stuy, and someone was already calling me out. Near the huge front doors, a lanky figure sat on the hood of such an old, crumbly, rusty truck that it was surprising it didn't collapse underneath the weight of one person.

I recognized him right away. "Shut up, Demitri, you lazy ass!" I focused on him instead of the front doors, making a beeline towards his poor, sad vehicle. I owed this guy a good kick to the shins.

"Aw, don't be mad, Jack," Demitri sighed when I drew closer, the heels of my boots clicking with each step on the cold concrete. I was surprised I could walk in these things. Or even fit them, for that matter. "I didn't really feel like goin' out and about, picking up weird girls who scare me by showin' off their short little white legs. You got a cigarette?"

"No," I snapped, shifting the weight of my bag on my shoulders. "And don't call me Jack, I'm not a guy."

"Why not?" he whined, and I could tell just by the way he pined and the way his fingers were twitching he wasn't asking about the forbidden pet name.

I folded my arms. "Because you denied me a ride to school, made a big deal about my clothes, called me Jack, and made a comment on my _legs. _I wouldn't give you a cigarette if I_ had_ one. I'm not eighteen, loser."

"Jerk." He pursed his lips and looked away like he was really offended, but I knew better—he was just sore because he was craving nicotine. Insulting this guy was easy: a toxic green porcupine head that made his eyes look just as bright, a body skinnier than most girls, a face full of metal and none of it done professionally—but he didn't even mind. Though I had to say, I loved all of the pins in his face. My favorite one is the safety pin stabbing through his eyebrow.

I spun around on my heel and headed towards the door, my ears stinging from the wind. I heard Demitri follow close behind.

"So, you going for the Japanese schoolgirl look or somethin'?" He asked as he hurried alongside me, hands deep into his pockets and his eyes straight ahead of him as well passed through the doors. Inside Stuyvesant High School was pretty cool, I won't deny—but it lost it's magic after you learned you'd have to climb six stories every day just to get to one class. And so God willed it, I had a biology class up there for my first period. You got love getting up in the morning walk six stories into the air to listen to your teacher drone on about your worst subject. "'Cause you look like one. One of those dumb, squealing ones, too."

"Shut up, Pins," I said and brushed some hair out of my eyes only to have it fall back. The little skull clips on the side of my head did nothing to my choppy fringe, and I liked it that way. "It's cute, don't deny it."

"Whatever," was his reply. The late bell rang, and unlike ninety percent of the masses of bodies around us, Demitri and I didn't feel the familar surge of terror at the thought of being late. It would probably take me fifteen minutes just to get my stuff, and that's if I felt like hurrying. I stopped at my locker, but he kept walking to some unknown destination.

"See you, ugly!" I called. He turned his head to send me a smirk.

"Bye, bitch."

I laughed, but it faded into a groan as I swapped my heavy backpack for two textbooks, a pencil case, and a thick book of notes. By the time I had reached the first escalator, only a few stragglers and hall monitors with eyes sharp for hands without a late pass remained, but I really didn't care about that. If someone called me out, then I wouldn't have to spend so much time in Mr. Fredrickson's classroom. If they didn't, I wouldn't have detention. Or at least as much detention, because my biology teacher loved whipping out his detention pad at every chance he got.

I took a step to the escalator connecting floors one and three. _Click. _And another, and another. _Click click. _I smiled, the sound of the the heels of my boots hitting the smooth marble a strangely satisfying one. I took slow, deliberate steps just to hear the steady clicking noise until I climbed onto the escalator, and then I ran up it not because I was worried about being late, but so I could get to the next hallway and hear the awesome _click click clicking_ of my boots. At the fifth floor, though, I was stopped.

"Late again, Jacqueline?" a familiar, weary voice asked me in the middle of the hall. A gangly Junior who held a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other. The stone gray eyes of an insomniac stared at me in such a tired fashion I felt guilty for making her work like this. "Or are you just messing around?"

She didn't sound mad at me. "Sorry, Ester. I had to walk to school today, and well... yeah, I was messing around. But I'm on my way to class now."

Ester looked at me considering, the pen poised above the paper of her clipboard and ready to sign my name down in the blink of an eye. Instead she sighed. "Okay, I'll just let your teacher deal with you. I don't feel like doing this right now, I'm too tired. See you, Jacqueline."

She always insisted on calling me by my first name.

"Bye, Ester."

After that I resumed my clicking at a faster pace, because I really didn't want a confrontation with someone who wasn't so lenient as the bookish girl monitoring the fourth floor. Luckily, after playing army a few times by diving behind big plotted plants and hiding in the bathrooms whenever an adult voice floated by, I made it to floor seven.

The clicking was so fascinating, I didn't think up of a good excuse as to why I was late, other than that my mother is a cold, heartless beast who wants me to not only freeze to death but face horrible punishments at school.

The door was shut. Perfect. I pushed up it open and walked into the classroom, shutting it as quietly as I could behind me, but it was too late—all heads were turned towards me. Except for one.

I walked into the "side" of the classroom, which meant all of the student's desks were facing the front wall which was the wall to my left, covered with an unused dry erase board. Five rows of desks. In front of the first row was a little walkway, and then there was the teacher's desk, covered in papers and grading pens and photographs. To that desks right, there was another desk pressed to it in the opposite direction to form a right angle, where the high-tech computer ran and where Mr. Fredrickson sat, his balding head facing me and apparently too absorbed to notice my presense.

"Sorry I'm late, Fredrickson," I said as I walked through the space between the teacher's desk and the front row to reach the little lane of desks closest to the windows.

No response.

I faltered in my step in front of all of my peers before stopping completely. No response? From Mr. Fredrickson? The strictest teacher in this school, the one who won't tolerate lateness, who hates me to the core and loves to shout? And hates it when I drop the "mister" from his name?

I tilted my head to the students, and my blood ran cold. They sat in their seats and made no sound, only stared with eyes as wide as saucers right through me, fingernails gripping the sides of their desks so tightly knuckles were turning white. I knew who they were looking at, and it made me scared just to look and see for myself. The silence alone was enough to shake me up—this was the worst behaving class of the lot, no matter the time or occasion.

_This is freaking me out,_ I thought. Freaky. This was freaky. What was the matter with these kids? Why were they staring past me like there was some sort of boogeyman behind me? A girl in the back was crying silent tears, hitting the wooden desk with a light _tap, tap, tap, _and it was like that alone left me feeling hollow. Something wasn't right.

"Fredrickson?" I repeated, and I wanted to kick myself because my voice raised an octave in what could only be friend. I twisted my head around to look at him, and... stared.

In a few words, he looked like hell. His thinny grey hair stuck to the sides of his face in sweat, his lined face sunken and saggy looking. I don't know how to describe his skin at the time other than a horrible, blistered, soggy gray. This was beyond my own pale skin that earned affectionate nicknames of "vampire" and "pasty." Droopy, glazed over eyes stared vacantly at the computer screen, mouth slightly agape and a trail of saliva dribbling down his chin. I slowly shifted my eyes to the monitor, and felt my throat constrict tightly. The screen was black. The computer wasn't even on.

_Creepy, _I thought._ Creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy._ This was creepy. Mr. Fredrickson was creepy. The silent classroom was creepy. This couldn't be good. This was bad. Very, very bad.

"He's been like that," someone whispered. "for _fifteen minutes._"

Oh my God, I was really late for class.

What a retarded thing to think in a situation like this. Mr. Fredrickson looked like a zombie, and not the overworked high school teacher zombie, either.

"Are you serious?" I whispered back.

The person must have nodded, because I heard no response. I vaguely wondered why nobody called the nurse, because he looked really sick.

"Okay," I said, thoroughly spooked. "Okay..."

Spooked and not knowing what else to do, I started walking back to my desk again, adjusting my books underneath my arm. The horrible, gray, saggy face snapped his head in my direction with an expression full of snarls, drool, and fiendish eyes, a look so feral and freaky and shocking I stumbled back to into one of the desks on the front row and let out an embarrassing shriek.

He shrieked back, spun around in his swivel chair to us, and made a lunge over the table like he was going to take a swipe at me from there, but his body froze and his face twisted and contorted awfully as if he was in horrible, horrible pain, and he put his hands on his front desk and heaved all over the floor in between me and him.

My body was frozen in place, my mind screaming for me to get out but the muscles of my arms and legs refusing to budge. I just leaned as far as I could back on Steven Miller's desk, who didn't seem to pay attention in the slightest. We watched in morbid fascination as he puked red liquid, red _blood,_ all over the floor and his desks, chunks going along with it that looked strangely like his insides instead of what might have been his lunch. I was paralyzed. That... wasn't normal puke.

That wasn't a normal illness.

After he finished, he just stood hunched over his desk, breathing heavily for a few seconds. And of course, some girl in the back had to scream, "Are you alright, Mr. Fredrickson?"

Again his head snapped up in the same feral of expression, only intensified with the blood dribbling out of the corners of his mouth and his eyes, oh God, his eyes—a gleaming yellow. He snarled not unlike a dog and leaped over his desk.

"Shit, what?" I yelled and jerked to the side as he flung himself at me, instead getting Steven. He bit, clawed, gnawed, and everyone else screamed and burst into tears and scrambled out of the desks. I followed some and ran as far away from Fredrickson as I could—to the back of the room, where I pressed my back against it as if I could mold into it if I tried hard enough. He was mauling Steven, he was digging his fingernails into him like some sort of animal, biting him like he hadn't eaten in weeks, and all I could do was watch and cry and scream like all of the others, everyone else too scared to do something and expecting someone else to play the hero.

It turns out nobody had to play hero. Nobody had to knock the guy off. Because what seemed to be bigger threat popped up and while he might have saved the rest of our lives, I doubted it would be for long.

Because Dylan McKeizel pulled out a gun, and he _shot our teacher to the ground._

* * *

**Dun, dun, dunnnn.**


	3. the bad stuff

**A/N: Whoooo, chapter two. I want to take this time thank my one and only reviewer, clac234, for reviewing the both the prologue and the first chapter. Seriously, you are awesome. I hope you'll stick around even if this story fails to live up to your expectations. If it doesn't, at least tell me before you decide to stop reviewing my crap, so I don't start wondering, "Where did my one and only reviewer go? ;_;" **

**If you're reading this but not reviewing this, that's cool I guess. But reviews give me a HUGE burst of happy. Seriously, they like, make my day. And happiness brings motivation. But if you're not reading this then I guess you really don't care so nyaaaa. BUT IF YOU ARE READING THIS, please, make a teenaged girl's day. :D I'm not one of those people who say "REVIEW OR I WON'T WRITE RAWWR" because I write for fun, but hey. Reviews rock.**

**Jacky is kinda out of character in this chapter. If she even has much of a character yet after two chapters. The monologue is really weird if you ask me and when I read it over my reaction was "... neh" but I decided it was good enough. Unfortunately I'm not a very "devoted" writer yet. I'm sorry. :X**

**Feel free to point out any grammar issues or WTF words. Sometimes I'll type a word that I totally did not mean to type. My brain moves faster than my fingers on the keyboard (and my fingers on the keyboard are pretty fast). The first draft is always a diaster and I usually only notice the errors until after I publish it. The first chapter has been edited already.**

**Long author's note is long. This where I SHOULD put a disclaimer saying I don't own Left 4 Dead but uh... this is fanfiction so... duh. **

____

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 2  
**the bad stuff

The silence was so thick we were practically swimming in it. Everyone stared from their places in the room at Mr. Fredrickson's bleeding, twitching form, not quite believing what they were seeing. I didn't. I couldn't. This was like some strange dream, some strange nightmare. Blood oozed from the bullet holes in my late teacher's chest, and I swallowed the rising sobs in my throat. Biology. Teacher. Floor. Dead. Blood. Bullets. Gun. Student. Murder.

I tried to press myself against the back of the wall even more than I had been, maybe trying to disappear, to wake up. I only realized my breathing was rapid and shallow when I started to feel light-headed. Not happening not happening this was not happening this never happens to me not to me not to my family—

A scream punctured the quiet like a soap bubble, and two dozen heads whipped around to the source of the noise. Huddled in a corner, farthest as could be from the armed boy in the center of the room, was Madison Karr. Showing all signs of losing her petty blonde head, she cowered against the wall with her arms folded and her body hunched over her knees.

"You killed him," she said once, her voice barely above a whisper as she stared at Mr. Fredrickson's murderer. Then she grabbed fistfuls of her shoulder-length hair and tears exploded from her eyes. "You killed him!" she screamed.

"Yeah, what the hell, Dylan?" I shouted, wheeling around to the wiry brown haired teenager gripping a pistol in his hands tightly, only a few meters away from me. I don't know how I remembered his name, but I certainly needed to remember how to breathe correctly after using all that air to sob and scream. I forgot myself for a moment as I tried to steady myself, I even closed my eyes and put one hand on my chest, trying to slow my breathing. In, out. In, out. Deeper breaths. The light headed feeling faded, but the panic and sheer terror I felt did not. While I was trying to calm down, though, everyone else decided to choose that moments to freak out.

"We're going to die!"

"He's going to kill us!"

"I need my cellphone. Where's my cellphone?"

The classroom exploded into a huge screaming, crying, and hair pulling fest the loud resounding crashes coming from frustrated and scared boys flipping over desks. Only a few remained quiet, slumped against the walls staring hopelessly at their palms or looking very ill. I guess everyone would be feeling sick after watching their teacher get shot. It was difficult for me to breathe again as a sob choked out of my mouth. I slapped a hand over it, more tears leaking out of my eyes.

"He killed Steven!" Dylan shouted over the chaos, and only a few paused to look up at him with wide eyes. "He killed Steven, and you're saying I'm the problem here?" I only bit my lip and listened to the millions of replies.

"You're holding us hostage!" Madison was the first to shriek. "You killed them and now—oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..."

"Probably shot Steven himself—"

"Mr. Fredrickson wouldn't—"

"Liar! You shot him on purpose!"

"Dead! Two people are dead! Why is this—"

"Why did you have a gun in your bag, Dylan?" a scrawny boy with greasy hair and a football jersey sitting against the wall not even a foot from me murmured, and yet it was the only thing I heard and registered. Yeah. Yeah. Why did Dylan have a gun? Why did he have it in his bag? Why? Why? This was school. No guns at school were allowed. No exceptions. Except maybe for cops. Dylan was not a cop.

"Why?" Dylan rounded around to face me and the majority of the class, huddled in the back of room, trying to get as far away from the corpses and the maniac as they could. He seemed to glare at each of us individually. "You want to know why?"

A few nodded, although wide-eyed and dazed like. Dylan let out a short, bark like laugh and clenched his fingers around the butt of the gun, but the laughter didn't reach his cold blue eyes. "I got up this morning and went to school today, and I planned on shooting down every one of you motherfuckers. That's why."

I could feel the blood draining out of my face, my hands trembling violently. This was it, then. I was going to be killed by a teenager I haven't even spoken to, but a teenager that obviously held a huge grudge against the majority of the school. Maybe he was bullied. Maybe when he was younger, the children were cruel to him. I didn't know. I didn't know him.

I closed my eyes tightly, trying to clear my eyes of tears without wiping them away with my hand and smudging my eyeliner. And now, I never will.

The breathing exercises from before obviously didn't work. I was hyperventilating, crying, breathing rapidly. Was I just thinking, a split second ago, about wiping away my tears and ruining my eyeliner? How could I be so stupid? How could I be such a _priss?_ A disgusting feeling wound up in my stomach and I slowly opened my eyes to see Dylan standing on top of a desk staring the class down with a pinched up expression.

"Maddie, don't—!" Most of everyone turned when they saw a girl desperately reaching out to her friend as she scurried away, daringly crawling past Dylan in some strange crab like motion that was almost humorous if only the situation was appropriate for it. Dylan spared her a glance as she wrenched her duffel bag out from underneath an overturned desk, viciously unzipped it, plunged her arm into and yanked out a bright pink flip phone, punching in the numbers for what I guessed to be 9-1-1.

"Thank God," someone breathed.

"Idiot!" I said, but my voice was hoarse from screaming and crying before. I coughed into my fist. "He's right there, he'll kill you!"

But Dylan didn't seem to care. He seemed strangely interested in a couple huddled in the corner Madison once was in, the girl with curly red hair—Bonnie—saying soothing things and petting Braiden's hair. I only knew his name because she kept saying it, over and over, "Braiden, Braiden, Braiden..."

"Was he sick before?" Dylan asked Bonnie, holding his weapon in a defensive position. What a dick. He was going to make conversation with us and draw this out instead of just killing us and getting it over with. My blood turned to acid burning in my veins at the thought, a strange energy surged through my body that hit me so hard I could barely see straight, but before I could act on any violent impulses a word gently floated into my thoughts: s i c k. . .

_Was he sick before?_

Sick? I craned my neck past all of the people lining the wall to my right to get a glimpse of Braiden who was slumped over with Bonnie hanging all over him, his hands clammy and his eyes glassy.

"No," Bonnie sobbed, pressing her face to Braiden's face and closing her eyes, big fat tearing clinging to her big thick eyelashes. He didn't react at all, only stared ahead of him emptily. "No, no, he wasn't, he was fine earlier today."

I leaned forward a little more to get a full of view of Braiden, and the first thing I noticed was a strange one.

His slump was similar to Mr. Fredrickson's before Dylan shot him.

I could see the wheels turning in Dylan's head. He licked his lips and raised the gun to the couple.

Bonnie screamed and threw himself over Braidon as if to protect him. Others wailed and sunk further into the walls. The poisonous energy returned.

"What do you think you're doing?" I shouted, taking big steps towards him. I considered how brave and stupid I was being for a moment. I could be shot any moment now. "You said you killed Fredrickson because he attacked us— Braiden hasn't done anything! You dick! You just want to kill us!"

Dylan whipped his head to me, freakishly pale blue eyes glaring down at me. I was right next to him, only he was still standing on top of a desk. I was also really terrified, but I hoped it didn't show. His loud reply came quickly.

"Haven't you seen the movies? There must be a freakish sickness going around, turning everyone into mindless monsters and—"

"Fredrickson was not a monster!"

"Yes, he was! He had yellow eyes and he attacked Steven! Now he's somehow spread it to Braiden and Braiden's going to give it to someone else if we don't kill him, now!"

"Nobody's answering!" Madison shrieked hysterically, slamming her phone onto the ground. "Why isn't anybody answering?"

"You're an idiot, Dylan!" I threw my hands up in the air and turned my back him, and faced the rest of the class. "That stuff doesn't happen in real life! When someone finds us, you'll be going to jail!"

The high pitched scream shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did—it seemed to be becoming a normal sound in this classroom—but still my body jerked at it and I looked for the source and—Bonnie. Braidon's very teeth sunk into her neck and blood sprayed out fall over his face. I staggered back, the urge to puke very strong once again. Minutes. He was healthy just minutes ago. In mere minutes he—he—impossible! This was impossible!

Reflexively Dylan held the gun up to eye level and shot probably half a clip of bullets into both of them, assuring himself they were dead.

"Why'd you shoot Bonnie?" I screamed, turning back around to face him and grabbing the leg of his baggy pants. I stopped caring by this point that tears were streaming from my eyes and my heart was pounding three times as fast as it should have been. "Why!"

"She was dead anyway!"

"What is this?" still I screamed, and my arms wrapped around his leg, his calf the only thing at eye level. I crushed the thing like a boa constrictor. "What is this and why is this happening? Why are they dead? Why do you want to kill us? Tell me!"

I was seeking comfort in this freak, this delinquent, this boy, and it was embarrassing. I couldn't think, I couldn't see, and I was asking for answers from the enemy. I expected him to kick me off any minute, but he didn't. I think he was glaring at me from above. The acidic feeling, the hatred, the anger, melted into pure terror and desperation. I couldn't... I wouldn't... ever understand. My brain raced, senseless thoughts darting across it.

What could this...

_Thump-thump_, my heart beat in my ears.

What could this be?

Something is wrong with Mr. Fredrickson... something is wrong with Braiden...

_Maybe we should take them to the doctor._

Bonnie, too?

_No, Jacky, there's no cure for death._

What can I do?

What can I do?

_Nothing. He'll probably shoot you, too._

What could this possibly be?

_Let go of his leg._

What's going to happen to Mom and Dad?

_What's going to happen to you?_

Is this why Jay couldn't give me a ride?

_Jay is dead._

I can't die. I'm only sixteen. I don't have my license.

_Only the good die young._

What does that even mean?

What's going to happen to everybody?

Is everybody going to be okay?

_Everybody is dead, Jacky._

And then there was one word: flu.

The headlines of the paper this morning flashed in my head.  
**  
DEATH TOLL FOR FLU RISES**

No. No way. No...

This stuff doesn't happen to me.

Ha...

Nothing bad... ever happens... to my family.

Ha ha.

The bad stuff always misses us.

The bad stuff always passes us by.

The armed teenager shouted something, and I clung to him still. But I opened my eyes. An orchestra of screams and shrieks and shouts rose from not only my classmates, but something feral just outside the door. A chunk of the door flew across the room and a dozen limbs shot through the hole, clawing, groping, reaching at the air, at us. Sickly gray arms, covered in sores and blisters and blue veins and blotchy spots. Hands with sharpened claws and outstretched fingers reaching for—for what? My throat? My heart? It didn't matter. The hole in the door got bigger and mad beings crawled through it, delighted shrieks rising from their throats as they stumbled at an alarming speed towards other human life.

Dylan pushed me off of his leg and to the ground, and I finally realized he wasn't the threat here anymore.

* * *

I don't know who the first person to launch themselves out the window was, but it sent shards of glass flying across the room that bit into the skin of my forearms as I brought them up to shield my face. I thought, _what a fool. _I didn't know if that was someone following the impulse to commit suicide or a desperate attempt to get away, hardly thinking of the consequences. But after that, even I thought of little. I just snatched up a larger piece of glass, ignored how it immediately cut deeply into my palms, and began plunging it into anything and everything fleshy and pale skinned. I only knew I needed to live, and I couldn't depend on Dylan.

I'm deaf, I decided, clumsily slicing the neck of a girl with neatly combed hair, little head ribbons, shiny black Mary Janes... and soulless yellow eyes. I couldn't hear anything. Everything was just a dull buzz, the screams and shatters and cries all melting into one monotonous sound.

"Ammo! I need more ammo!" Dylan shouted, smashing someone's head in with the butt of his pistol with a sickening crack. Human skulls were not that fragile. "My bag! Get me my bag!"

He was screaming at no one in particular, but the bag was just by my feet because I had been knocked further away from Dylan cutting through these people. I let the shard of glass drop from my hand and I fell to my knees, starting to tear open the black book bag I recognized as his, but a sharp pain shot up my arm from my fingers and I yelped, my arm jerking oddly. I looked at my hand, and when I saw the wounds, it hurt ten times more. One deep cut in my palm, and four others at the ends of my fingers. The blood was mine, and not belonging to any other.

My fingers. My fingers were going to fall off.

"Hurry up!"

As fast as I could with one badly trembling hand, I unzipped the bag and reached my hand in there. It was _full_ of clips of ammo, I could tell just by feeling inside the bag. Something swiped at my shoulder and I let out a low hiss as I struggled to my feet, but when I turned around a large, thick book collided with the person's skull, successfully bringing it to the ground. Someone bumped me in the shoulder that was swiped and caused me to stumble forward, but before I could yell at them three of the insane students killing us were on him and tearing at his insides. Everything was a blur of colors, shapes, and vague outlines, all human faces either fogged with some sort of madness or just a smudge of facial features. I could barely see the overturn desks around me, the battlefield that was this classroom. The only thing in clear crystalline focus was the clip of bullets in my hand, my nearly severed fingers, and Dylan, still standing on top of a desk and holding his ground against anyone who came near him, brutally beating away and kicking whatever came near him. But he wouldn't last long.

And then none of us would last.

_The bullets. If he gets the bullets, we'll survive._

I made a run for Dylan.

I leapt over the desks, the chairs, the bodies, shoved aside and punched at the fragile bodies desperate to kill me, ignored how impossible, illogically, incomprehensible this situation one and focused on one thing alone: survival. And if I was going to survive, I had to get these bullets to Dylan.

A fleeting thought passed me—_you're killing your friends._

But my friends were killing me. And I would never let my friends kill me.

Somehow I made it to him. Somehow, I managed to avoid his kick aimed at my head at the blind accusation I was one of the rapid, and I managed to slap the clip of bullets in his hand. Somehow, Dylan finished off what was left of the monsters and somehow they stopped coming through the door.

Somehow, I survived. Dylan survived.

The silence was sudden and great, almost as deafening as the chaos not minutes before. There were several things missing. Screams. Cries. Sobs. But there was only Dylan's heavy breathing and little hisses of pain from me.

I brought my eyes up from the ground, and something caught in my throat.

We were the only ones who survived.


	4. ground rules

**A/N: Okay, so, this took longer than I anticipated. Like... a lot longer. Hmm. Let's see what excuses I can dig up... the first one is kind of embarrassing to admit. I've been watching Sailor Moon (LOL YEAH SAILOR MOON) again. I haven't seen that since I was like, six. I doubt any of my readers know who she is because this is a fan fiction for a video game, but still, lol. Sailor Moon. Another slightly more emo excuse is that I've been under a whole lot of emotional stress and following emotional stress I fall into these HUGE pits of SHEER APATHY. The past few weeks, I've been the most apathetic and unproductive creature in the world. No promises it won't happen again.**

**HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT ALL THOSE REVIEWS! Okay, only four for the third chapter, but still, when I read them, I was like, "YESSSSSS!" See, I'm easily pleased. It's not that hard. Just review. :D I apologize for the lack of action in this chapter. I was going to add more but I figured I should update now and not prolong it anymore.**

* * *

**Chapter Three  
**_ground rules_**  
**

There had to be at least forty bodies piled in the room, the people who had attacked us doubling the amount of victims in the vicinity.

Slumped against the overturned desks, scattered across the flower, lying atop of each other, all either slowly paling or already gray, covered in bullet holes or slash marks. The area around Dylan was the worst. He was lucky enough to be standing on top of a desk, some distance away from the carnage, but I was cowering beside him with dead people all around my ankles, thick blood seeping from their wounds and onto my boots.

I watched as Dylan slowly fell to his knees, his hands trembling so badly he dropped the gun. When it hit the wooden desk it almost seemed to crash in the silence, but it didn't fall off of it and onto the floor. He closed his eyes tightly shut and ran his hands over his face, sweat clinging to his to his forehead as he mouthed words I couldn't hear.

The four wounds on my fingers pulsed with my heartbeat, and I looked down at them. The cuts were nasty and dirty, but they weren't as deep as I thought they were before. I wouldn't lose my fingers, but they would get infected if I didn't clean them off soon and it still hurt like hell. I didn't know what the cut on my back looked like, but from my right shoulder blade to the middle of my back it felt as if a lion had cut me and not someone's fingernails. I didn't know if I _wanted _to see what it looked like.

Dylan drew in a sharp, quick breath, and I looked at him again. I expected him to start crying at any moment now. He suddenly looked so pathetic and weak. I felt like _I_ should have started crying then, but for some reason all I could think about was insulting Dylan. He had been the only one who hadn't been crying or screaming or causing chaos—for the most part he acted somewhat calm. And I resented him for it, because he lived, while other people who reacted perfectly normally for the situation did not, even though I was alive, too. Some part me wanted to put all of the blame of Dylan for this situation because I didn't know who else I _could _blame.

"You couldn't do this," I said, and though my voice was shaking I could hear the bitterness my words held myself. "You couldn't kill these students if you wanted to. Look at you now. You don't even know how to really use that gun, do you? What did you have to prove by bringing this here?"

"Ungrateful bitch," he hissed back without even looking at me, and I felt my temper flare up. "I saved you and all you have to say is how I couldn't have done this if they weren't attacking me. If it weren't for me, you'd be dead."

"Everyone else is dead," I said. "I doubt that you made much of a difference."

"Two people left alive is better than no people left alive. There's more people in this school, in this world, that are alive, I'm sure."

"I'm sure there are more zombies," I shot back. "Enough to take out the entire school, the city."

Dylan turned his head to look at me, a strange humor dancing in his eyes. "Zombies?" he chuckled.

"What else am I supposed to call them?" I snapped and my arms folded in a defensive gesture. "Perfectly normal human beings?"

"But they're not dead," Dylan said. "Zombies are reanimated dead bodies. And these guys are really, really fast."

I was mouthing "_blah. blah. blah._" until I found a place to butt in at. "What else do you want me to call them? I don't want to think of them as my classmates, thank you very much."

"I guess we can call them zombies."

"Seriously, are we calmly discussing this when our entire biology class is lying dead at our feet? _Calmly?_"

"You'll have time to cry like a big baby later," Dylan sneered, and the iciness returned. He was acting just way he was before he killed everything. "Right now, we need to get out of here. Get me my bag."

"You're not the boss of me. And you don't even know how to use that gun."

As if to prove me wrong, he picked it back up and got off from his knees, bringing himself to his full height and holding it in an offensive position. It looked like was just bragging that he had it in the first place and I didn't know how to use a gun myself so I couldn't begin to point out anything that was wrong with the way he held it.

"Get me my bag," he said again. I scowled, but turned around and slowly began stepping over bodies, maneuvering around fallen desks. _Why did I have to get stuck with the biggest asshole in the world when the world itself is currently against me? Why?_

I stepped on someone's hand and immediately it cracked, and I jerked my foot immediately up and forced myself not to look at who belonged to. _Sorry, _I thought quietly to whoever it was, whether it be a zombie or a victim of one. Bile rose up in the back of my throat but I started walking again and tried to erase the sound of the bones breaking from my mind.

_Why can't he get his bag himself? _I plugged my nose and I stood in a small patch of floor that wasn't occupied by the dead. I could see that strap of Dylan's bag in front of me, and that was it. The greasy haired boy in the football jersey was lying on top of the bag itself, his open and glazed over eyes seeming to stare right at me and a mangled mess of what used to be a throat standing out against his pale skin. I swallowed, tightly closed my eyes and snatched up the strap of the bag in one quick movement, yanking at it until I didn't feel any resistance. I bundled up the strap and brought the bag to my chest, closing both arms tightly around it. Soon my arms were warm and wet and I didn't have to guess what liquid covered them, what covered the bag. I suddenly realized how awful the stench was—the sharp metallic smell of blood and something else, something worse. I lowered my face into the bag to block it, instead the scent worsened and I began shaking before weeping into the bag. I didn't care if I was getting stupid tears blackened by my makeup all over Dylan's stuff, in fact I kind of liked the idea, so I used it to justify crying more.

I knew that wasn't the reason why I was crying.

"... Are you alright?" I heard Dylan ask. I raised my head away from the bag to see him sitting down, legs dangling over the edge of the desk and his arms hanging limply by his sides. He was watching me with something that could have been concern, something that could have been care, blue eyes staring straight into mine.

I sniffed and held the bag with one arm as I raised the other to wipe away my tears. When I lowered my arm I glared at Dylan through watery eyes.

"That's a stupid question," I said, my voice lower than I thought it would be, and then threw the bag with all my might towards Dylan. It hurt my cut fingers and it only landed at his feet, but I felt a sense of satisfaction because he jumped as if it would hit his face. He grimaced as he lifted the bag into his lap and reloaded his gun again before pulling the backpack onto his shoulders. I didn't know what kind of gun it was, I only knew it was small, black, and slick. Maybe I could see James Bond using it to kill some baddie, but I couldn't see Dylan using it to slay any more zombies in huge groups. I think the only reason we survived is because the creatures at the rest of the class to focus on.

"Excuse me for asking."

"Yeah, because your concern means _so much _to me right now."

He hopped off the desk and walked at a startling fast pace towards to the door, or the archway where the door had been. Alarms went off in my head and I stumbled on several bodies as I shot towards him on first instinct, but mercifully I never fell over. I grabbed the sleeve of his his dark long sleeved shirt before he could leave the room. "Where do you think you're going?" I asked, and I wanted to kick myself because my voice was high and near hysterical.

"Away from here, obviously," Dylan sneered, jerking his arm out of my grasp. "I don't think that's any of your business."

I bit my lip and looked up at him. He was still a good head and a half taller than me, even when he wasn't standing on top of a desk. "And what are you going to do?"

He was just as scary as he was on the desk, too, maybe even more so now when he sneered down at me with those light eyes, his collar covered in dried blood and his face marred with a few small, red scratches. "Does it matter? You're not following me."

"What?" First I felt horror, then a surge of anger. "You are _not _leaving me here _alone!_"

"You've already made it very clear that you do not like me, and you're pretty fucking annoying yourself, so work it out." He started walking again.

_"Hell_ no!" I kept close to his heels as he walked into the halls, hardly paying attention to my surroundings. "That's the dumbest idea _ever_ in this situation!"

"Does it matter?" he said again, this time with a harder edge to it as he spun around to face me. I almost bumped straight into him. "Look. It's not like I'm going to protect you or anything—"

"Ass! You're the one with the gun, you should try to save as many people as you can, you—"

"Hey, shit for brains, do you remember _why _I brought the gun to school in the first place? I _hate _these people!"

"You'll die!" I screamed, and it seemed to rip into the unsettling silence more than ever. Dylan didn't say anything, so I kept going. "You'll be alone and nobody's going to want to save you because you have no friends! You will _die _without someone's help."

I really didn't know if Dylan had friends or not, but at that point I was trying to think of both the most hurtful and the most convincing things at once. It seemed to have struck a nerve, and I instantly regretted my words.

Dylan narrowed his eyes and looked straight into my own. "If it means you'll die, too," he said softly. "that doesn't sound like an entirely bad idea."

I opened my mouth, tried to eat my words.

"I—"

A strange, strangled cry came from behind me, and immediately Dylan's eyes snapped up above my head and I spun around to face it. A girl with a headband and a shirt splattered with peace signs and blood was running towards us at an alarmingly fast towards us. I could hardly react before a loud _bang _exploded right above my head, so close I could hear the bullet whistling. The zombie dropped just as my temper rose.

"You could have hit me!" I shrieked, and wheeled around to face Dylan again. My body was tensed like I was going to jump and take a swipe at him, and God be damned if I wasn't going to after he scared the shit out of me like that. "You _jerk!" _

"Shut. Up!" He raised his gun to shoot more creatures that were coming from the same way the other did. At least this time he had to decency to push my head down before duking out out on more intruders. I fell to my butt and snapped at his hands with my teeth, which wasn't a good idea because I was sitting at his feet where he could kick me and kick me he did, managing to do it before the last zombie fell down.

"Keep it down," he hissed under his breath after I let out a sharp "Ow!" when his foot connected with my spine. I was glad that he could probably only see the top of my head because tears actually rose to my eyes.

"That fucking _hurt,_" I growled back, wiping my eyes on my sleeve because my hands were caked with dried blood. Still, I played along and kept my voice low. Sort of. "Why are you whispering?"

"Because, idiot, every time you scream whenever something moves, more of them come running!"

"Oh, how silly of me, to _scream _whenever _zombies _are chasing me!" My voice began to rise regardless of what he just said. "Surely I should be as calm and composed as you are! I'm sure this is just a walk in the park for you! Of _course_ I should have known zombies are attracted to _loud noises." _

"Get up and shut up." Dylan snapped back, and I could feel him aiming for another kick. I rolled out of the way just before he could hit me. I most likely had a bruise on my back already and the last thing I needed was bruises over bruises, if that was possible.

"Sorrr_yyyyyy._" I pulled myself to my feet while Dylan reloaded his gun again, although I was pretty sure that he still had plenty bullets left in that clip. A brief silence fell over us, and I let my eyes rake over the hallway. Nearly all the doors leading to classrooms were busted down. There were about a dozen of bodies scattered around, most slumped against the walls or sprawled not a few feet from a classroom, nasty claw marks marring their backs.

_There's nothing left of the sixth floor, _I thought, biting my lip. _Maybe nothing left of this school._

_I just don't know._

Everything was so dead, so silent, an eerie calm stretching over the hallway. For a few moments, I allowed myself to believe everything was dead, silent, calm.

Then I slowly heard the resounding crashes from the lower floors, the muffled screams for help, the noises of those were were alive but not for along, dulled by the layers of ceiling. I heard cars collide into another from the outside, setting off alarms, just a small bit of the mass hysteria from outside. The illusion of silence faded into a barely disguised uproar that overwhelmed my senses.

Maybe everything was dead. But it was not silent. Calm.

Flu.

This was one hell of an outbreak.

_I need to sit down._

I inched closer to the nearest wall and rested my head on it, closing my eyes. My heart seemed to be in my head and not in my chest, because my pulse seemed to be beating against the walls of my skull.

Just a few moments ago I was fine, yelling at Dylan, hating his guts. I shoved aside most of my feelings save for boiling out anger towards my only partner in this mess and the primal need to survive. Then silence came and gave me time to soak everything in when there was just too much for me on such short notice.

It wasn't just the school. I knew it was all of Manhattan, too. Maybe the whole city. Maybe the whole state. Hell, maybe the world. I should have expected this, the states north of us had been _quarantined _for just _this. _I should have _known..._

_We're not gonna make it._

"We're not going to make it," I whispered, opening my eyes and staring at the mess of a hallway in front of me, though at the same time nothing in particular. Dylan heard me.

"Probably not, but I'm going to try like hell to make it for as long as I can," he said, walking to my side. What he said should have been inspirational, motivational, but it didn't make me feel any better. There was nothing inside me. I think someone somehow managed to steal all my organs and bones and everything in my chest because I felt empty. Hollow. Nothing.

"Hey, come on." Dylan said when I didn't respond, and the typical icy tone was dropped in the blink of an eye. He almost sounded sympathetic. "Snap out of it."

My lips drew into a tight line. I wish I could snap out of it. I wish I could wake up from this nightmare. He touched my shoulder and I jumped slightly, snapping my eyes over to the offending hand and then at the blood smeared face staring at me with a softened expression. I was about to yell at him not to touch me, but—

"What's your name?"

… what?

I blinked.

My name. He doesn't know my name.

I guess he wouldn't know my name... he wants to know my name.

Such a simple question only required a simple answer.

Such a trivial question... okay, sure. He wants to know my name. Sure.

"Jacky. Jacqueline." I closed my eyes and breathed in. Why was this so hard for me to answer? "Jacqueline Louise. No. No, just... Jacky." I opened my eyes and breathed out. Dylan spared me a halfhearted smile and took the hand off my shoulder. So stupid. I'm so stupid and fragile and why do I choose now to start falling apart?

"I'm Dylan," he said, though I already knew. Still I swallowed with difficulty (it was as if I had been crying for hours. Maybe I had been.) and nodded. I lifted my head off of the wall and he folded his arms across his chest, the popgun never leaving his hands. Probably because he had no where else to put it. Or maybe because we weren't exactly safe.

"We're going to have to hole up somewhere. Maybe for a few days," he said slowly, with the calm and control of an adult. It was almost infuriating to listen to, but I was too exhausted to snap at him for it. "Getting a bus or taxi away from here is out of the question, obviously. I'm inclined to believe the whole world has gone to hell."

"I want to go home," I whispered.

He slowly shook his head. "It's the same way everywhere else. It's best if we stay inside the school. Stuyvesant is huge, but New York city is bigger. There will be more zombies out there than in here."

_You don't understand. _"I need to see my mom," I said, my lower lip beginning to tremble violently.

"Later," Dylan said with a hint of impatience. I didn't stop to consider if he was lying to me just so I wouldn't shut down. He gave me a little bit to get over myself before speaking again. "We need to get somewhere safe. Any ideas?"

I thought for a minute. "The cafeteria?"

Dylan's eyebrows arched up. "The fifth floor cafeteria? Why? That's a lot of open space."

I looked down. "Well, there will be food..."

His eyes flicked over to the clock on the wall. "But it isn't even lunch time..."

A surge of irritation. A wave of bitterness. A dark joke formulating itself within moments. I jumped at the opportunity to ridicule Dylan, despite his earlier comfort.

"Yeah, and I'm sure that at twelve-fifteen, the dead lunch ladies will serve up their usual crap like they do everyday," I sneered, but regretted the sarcasm almost immediately when Dylan's eyes narrowed into a cold stare before shifting his entire body away from me. My jaw almost dropped. Seriously? It was as if I flicked a switch, and Dylan was back to being distanced, bitter, and inches away from a full fledged sociopath.

_Shit, _I thought. _Things don't need to be more strained between us than it already is, shit, he's my only way out of this, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit..._

"Dylan, I'm sorry." I said. What gods stuck us together like this? Why couldn't I be with someone I _knew?_

Dylan ignored my apology. "Does the kitchen have a walk-in freezer?" he asked instead.

I blinked, slowly processing the question. At least he wasn't going to leave me behind... "Yes..."

"Hmm." He brought his folded arms closer to himself. "This just might work."

"Okay!" I said, sounding unusually peppy. _Best friend._ I thought. _Gotta be his best friend. _I spun on my heel towards the way to the fifth floor. Thank God it wasn't so far away. "To the cafeteria, then!"

I don't know who the hell I thought I was leading the guy with a gun or suddenly taking on the cheery tone of voice, but I had to be nice to this guy. Even though I only spoke five words to him like that, I _did _sound overbearing, but I made the decision in less than two seconds that I had to be nice as possible to him so he didn't leave me weaponless or just shoot me. Until we got to the "safe spot", anyway. I just hoped he didn't shoot me for just that, too. I guess I could blame it on bipolar disorder, even though that was total bullshit. I didn't act anything like this during a manic session, and plus, I took my pills this morning.

"Wait," Dylan said flatly, stopping me mid step. I faced him and waited for him to walk up to me.

"What is it?" I asked, the unbearable burst of friendliness fading.

"Before we go, we—" He pursed his lips angrily at the pronoun. I sighed inwardly at this display. "—need to lay down some ground rules for ourselves."

"Ground rules?" I repeated, then looked straight up at him. "I get to help make them, right?"

He rolled his eyes. I took that as a yes.

"First rule," Dylan held up his index finger. "We're not going to attack each other. We—"

"_You're _one to talk," I interjected, grimacing as the spot on my back where he kicked me throbbed angrily.

His face pinched up more in annoyance of being interrupted than anything else.

"Second," Dylan continued with a firm note in his voice and paused, daring me to put in my two cents. "I have the gun, you carry the bag." In a matter of seconds he let the bag drop from his shoulders, catching it just in time to shove it into my arms.

I stared at him incredulously.

"That isn't a _rule!"_

"Shut up! I won't be able to reach for more ammo with it on my bag and I can only fit so much in my pockets. Time to make yourself useful."

I gritted my teeth and made a show of slamming the bag to my feet, but said nothing and waited for his next "rule."

"Third, keep your space. Don't get in the line of fire. Stick close, but not too close. Got it?"

_Sucky rules, _I thought. I nodded.

He sighed. "Good."

"My turn," I said with a smile. Dylan grimaced.

"I don't have to agree to anything stupid."

"I did," I shot back, kicking at the backpack. Ow... ow, that kind of hurt my toes. What was in there? I ignored Dylan's questioning eyes and knelt to the ground to unzip the bag.

"You will do what you can to keep me safe," I said, pushing the black clips of ammo all to one side. I felt horribly pathetic and helpless saying this to him, but I could tend to my wounded pride later. "until I get a weapon of my own. I hate depending on you, but when I can, we'll depend on each other."

He rolled his eyes. I ignored him and pulled out a few spiral notebooks from his bag, obviously meant for schoolwork.

"And you won't purposely shoot me." I paused, then added, "Or any other non... infected."

I couldn't see him roll his eyes this time, but I heard him scoff. I gritted my teeth a little harder.

"We won't leave each other behind if we can help it," I said, softly this time. By then I successfully emptied Dylan's bag of all heavy school supplies. "I'll come to your aid if you need it, I expect you'll do the same for me."

There was a small stretch of quiet. I turned to face Dylan from my spot on the floor. "Do I need to write this down for you?"

Dylan scoffed again and shook his head. I hoped his eyes would forever be stuck looking up since he had a nice habit of rolling them at me.

"Good," I mimicked him, slinging the bag over my shoulders and rising to my feet. "Let's go, then."

"One more thing," Dylan said, grabbing my shoulder and making me look straight at his face. "We can't save anyone."

"What?" I didn't quite understand what he meant.

"We can't jeopardize our own safety for other people. You're going to have to ignore anyone asking for help, because they're probably lost anyway." His words were firm, but they seemed strange, said, sympathetic. "We can't risk it."

It wasn't lost on me, but it was the words themselves that got me. "Why not? They need someone to save them, why not us?"

"_Why _us?" Dylan shot back. "We're not cops or anything. We're not heroes. We're two sophomores stuck in a prep school filled with enemies and liabilities."

"You think cops are going to do anything?" My voice was rising again. "They're probably running for their lives! Or even better, they're zombies! What good is a cop? _This _is how real heroes are made!"

"Don't get all cheesy and heroic with me! I'm thinking about my life, and _yours, _actually, so shut your damn mouth and do as I say. Unless you want to die, anyway."

I bit my bottom lip until it bled, and I was surprised I could still see through the slits my eyes were reduced to in pure anger and frustration.

"Let's go," Dylan said sharply. And the ice king returned.

_I can't do this, _I thought, following behind him with my arms folded across my chest and my eyes glaring vehemently on the floor. _I can't do this. I can not put my life into the hands of this stupid bastard._

_Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard._

That's all I did... curse him in my head. I didn't know how long I was going to be able to deal with him. One minute he's resembling something relatively close to a kind human being, and then the other he's a heartless monster who doesn't care at all for the well being of others. I missed my friends already. I was craving humanity, compassion, some superhero to save me, save everyone. Who would feel bad whenever someone was lost and do what could be done to save those in need.

I didn't have that. I had this juvenile _asshole_ who bossed me around because he had the weapon. An ice cube was warmer than Dylan McKeizel. I had this prick who blatantly ignored cries for help and put his needs before others. I had this teenager who towered at least a foot above me who needlessly ridicules every word that leaves my mouth. I had this jerk who had the audacity to tell me not to help anyone who may need it because it would be my own downfall.

I had no clue that later, I would be thanking him for all of that.


	5. choke

**A/N: Late update is late. Sorry. DX I'm less than satisfied with this chapter, as it's shorter and the harder I look at it the more inconsistencies I find and I'm not very good at action scenes... and so I whine. THANK YOU to those who have reviewed. :3 If you haven't reviewed yet, please do. They can only do me good.**

**P.S.: OHMIGAWD, SNOW.**

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Four**  
_choke_

"Wait." I was growing tired of hearing that word, even as it passed my own lips. Dylan mimicked me and stopped in his tracks, but not before shooting me a dirty look, obviously annoyed we were stopping again.

I scanned over the top of the classroom doors where the class numbers would be printed on a tiny metal plate, searching for a specific letter-number combination. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe it wasn't on the sixth floor? But it had to be... Sixth floor was practically all-biology classes and—

"What is it now?" Dylan asked just as my eyes landed on the door of class 7F.

_Bingo._

"I have an idea," was all I said before taking off, running several feet until I was in front of the door. Dylan scowled and followed, albeit at a slower pace.

"Knowing you, any idea you have will probably end up in the two of us being killed," he said.

"Ha ha. That might have actually stung except for the little fact that you _don't _know me," I shot back without even looking at him, my eyes on the barrier in front of me. Unlike most of the doors, it still stood up... barely. Deep gouges marred the wood that was broken in several places, and the small glass window that allowed passerby to peek in the classroom was shattered, jagged glass teeth sticking out from the frame of it. There was no light on in the classroom, save for the light of the sun.

_The zombies were stupid enough to believe someone was in there long enough to tear this thing apart... _

I tried the doorknob.

_Click._

Locked. I bit my lip, considering climbing through the broken window, though if I got myself a nice gaping wound on my stomach then that would defeat the purpose of me getting inside. I could just forget it and leave, but then I would look like an idiot and still I would be unarmed...

Rude hands roughly pushed me aside, and before I could even protest Dylan took my spot in front of the door and threw all his weight into it, hitting the door with his shoulder. The already crippled door busted down effortlessly, but not painlessly.

"Hey, thanks!" I beamed and climbed over the wreckage.

Dylan scowled and rubbed his shoulder, then muttered something along the lines of "This better be worth it."

I didn't bother looking for a light switch—it was lit well enough in there thanks to the windows. I could see the neatly lined up desks, the chalkboard with yesterday's lesson still written on it, the big sport bags of fellow students thrown precariously against the wall... all untouched, the way it was left. I took a deep breath, the air seeming considerably cleaner in her than the hallway, and walked to the bags, kneeling down and unzipping the nearest one.

"What are you doing?" Dylan asked, though it didn't sounded like her really cared.

"Coach Hotaru lets his students keep their baseball equipment here until practice time," I mumbled, pulling out a wooden baseball bat. I turned it over in my hands and allowed myself a small smile. "It's something, right?"

Dylan didn't answer. I stood up and brushed off my skirt, facing him. He stood by the window, peering outside with his eyes wide and his skin at least a few shades lighter.

_What does he see?_

"We do _not," _he said after he visibly swallowed and tore his eyes away from the outside world. "want to go out there."

I didn't look to see for myself, but I believed him.

"A baseball bat, huh?" He said after getting a glimpse of the new addition in my hands. He looked at it for a few moments before rolling his shoulders into a shrug and saying, "I guess it's better than nothing. Let's go."

"Hey, you know..." I followed him as we left the room, being careful not to trip over the large chunks of wood. "Since I have a weapon now, do I still have to carry the bag?"

He actually grinned. "Yes."

"Huh." I shut up after that, beginning to get more and more on edge as we neared the stairs, the reality of the situation making itself clear to me once again. I bit my lip and listened as Dylan told me the plan: Get the the fifth floor, and then run like hell to the kitchen.

I learned very quickly that the bodies of the infected were much weaker than a human's.

Normally, you wouldn't be able to effortlessly knock off someone's head with a mere swing of a wooden baseball bat unless you had insane muscles. Normally, you'd be lucky if fractured someone's arm if you swung at someone with all of your might, not completely shatter it. But the skeletons of the infected were weak and brittle, and taking one down proved to be was easy.

Taking dozens of them down at once proved to be considerably harder.

"For God's sake, Jacky! Hurry up!" Dylan snapped as he shoved two zombies away with both hands before shooting them down. Another swiped at his back from behind and he let out a low hiss before wheeling around and punching it square in the jaw, successfully breaking it.

I wanted to shout back and call him an asshole, but I had something more important to focus on: beating these guys away from me. I raised the baseball bat up and then swiftly brought it down on someone's head, revulsion twisting up in my stomach as the zombie's head cracked loudly and blood gushed from the wound like a river. I backed up before swinging without much thought at the three others, arching the bat into the first one's jaw before swinging it into the second one's ribs, but it didn't kill him nor did he seem to notice the pain, just swiped at my wrist while it was near him and opened it's mouth, baring dirty, disgusting, bloodied teeth ready to bite.

"No!" I shouted and wasted no time with my bat— I punched it in the face. It staggered into it's comrade, and I took that time to smash both of their heads in, dark liquid and gray matter staining my bat. I couldn't look at it, the disgusting insides of the people... _creatures... _I killed.

"Jacky!"

I could finally run. I darted around zombies who immediately followed me, moving at a startling fast past but I was faster. Dylan was closer to the open doors to the cafeteria, literally trying to take on an entire horde of zombies by himself. I ran harder, raising my arms with the bat in my hands and bringing it down on a zombie that came up behind Dylan, killing it before it could dig it's claws into Dylan's already bleeding back.

"Why are there so many?" I asked no one in particular, swinging my bat around and helping Dylan finish up the remaining five around us, debating whether or not to simply run from the others. My chest was warm and wet, covered in that dark, ugly liquid that covered me, my bat, the zombies, the people...

The people I couldn't save.

Most of them were on the opposite side of the cafeteria. The few students who came here to hang out but otherwise do nothing were being mauled, and the first thing I did when I entered the cafeteria was lurch towards them, but Dylan grabbed my collar and told me they were too far away, silently reminding me of that "rule." I wanted to ignore him and throw a fit, but we were faced with our own problems, namely the infected that just noticed us and were having a field day trying to kill us.

"Come on!"

Dylan grabbed my arm the moment the last of them fell and jerked me in the direction of the empty archway to the kitchen, more zombies hot on our tail. I stumbled as I tried to keep pace, the claw marks on my wrists burning at Dylan's touch and the fingers of my right hand curled tightly around the baseball bat as to never let it go.

Then the heel of my shoe broke.

"Shit!" I stumbled and fell, and brought Dylan down with me.

I landed on my ankle awkwardly, but both of us wasted no time whipping around to face the oncoming infected. I struggled squeezing my now useless boot off, attempting to back away at the same time. Dylan cursed and crawled around trying to find where he dropped his gun and by the time he found it, I got the boot off, not once thinking to unbuckle it. With my other foot I aimed a kick square in the jaw of an alarmingly close infected, successfully breaking it. There were at least seven more still approaching, _fast_. Were all of these people on the track team?

"Get up!" Dylan shouted just as he got to his feet. I scrambled up and "limped" with Dylan who was now backpedaling and shooting at the same time. It was pathetic— I was going to die because I decided to wear heels that day. _You moron._

It wasn't a huge surprise when I tripped. It _was _a huge surprise when I didn't fall.

My entire body jerked backwards, and it was as if someone socked me in the stomach with everything they had. The baseball bat flew from my hands and clattered to the ground in front of me. Something was wrapped around my chest and it was _tightening, _crushing my ribcage and constricting my lungs.

And I was being dragged _back the way I came._

"What—?" was the only word I could force out as my heart began beating again and my lungs realized they needed air. My arms flung to the bindings on my chest and my fingers curled around them to try and pull off the rough... grimy... _slimy..._

I looked down at myself and nearly screamed.

A_ tongue._

At least, that's what I thought it was. That's all I could _think _it was, at first glance, and I didn't want to look at it any longer. And thinking was growing harder and harder as breathing became a laborious task.

"Jacky?"

I lunged forward, fought against it, but it only pulled back harder and my legs fell underneath me. It brought me to the infected. I squeeze my eyes shut and blindly batted my arms and legs at them and they hit back until gunfire echoed alarmingly close to me, Dylan's attempt to help, but he was being held up by the horde. The tongue slid from around around my chest to around my neck and I choked, my arms uselessly flying up to pry it away.

I twisted around to face the direction I was being dragged to, which wasn't a good idea because I succeeded in tightening the binding around my neck. I found myself face to face with the single most strangest thing I ever saw up until then.

It was a person. No... no. It was a zombie, but now I knew that zombie was not an appropriate term. Grotesque boils covered its exposed arms, but they worsened on his face, completely covering its left eye, leaving one eye to peer at me through dirty hair. A tongue— it really _was a tongue, oh my God—_hung from its mouth, drooped to the ground, wrapped around my neck, strangling me... impossible, inhuman. When it saw me, it coughed a deep throaty cough that only someone who smoked too many cigarettes could imitate. It was a familiar cough.

And maybe that was the first stage of recognition, because then I noticed its staggering height, it's skinny legs, and a few fading cuts around its chin from shaving. I noticed the logo of a punk rock band on its T-Shirt and the studs on its black jeans. I noticed the safety pin jabbing through its eyebrow.

_Demitri._

Any attempts of breathing stopped. Tears pricked my eyes and a lump rose in my throat.

_This is it then. _

_I should have known better than to believe Dylan wouldn't leave me behind. _

_This is it. I'm going to be killed by my best friend. It's over. _

_I'm done._

I was pressed up against Demitri now, and I could remember a time where I dreamed to be in this position with him, in the seventh grade when he was just a silly crush, but now it proved to be where I would die. His mutated fingernails dug into my back and the pain urged my throat to scream, but I had no air left in me for such a task. Black spots were forming at the edge of my vision and my brain was screaming for oxygen, but I had long since given up.

Yeah, I gave up.

I knew it was over.

It's not like there was anything left for me, anyways...

...

...

...

...I'm done.

_**NOT YET!**_

Demitri's head snapped back and a blood burst from his lips, some getting on me, and while I missed what hit him the first time the second strike was clear as day. A wooden baseball bat, _my _baseball bat, collided with the the side of Demitri's head, and while the blow didn't decapitate it like it would have done to any other infected, a sickening crack emitted from his head and I felt the blood before I saw it. He reeled back and the tongue's grip on my neck loosened considerably and I drew in a deep, hoarse breath before struggling out of the prison completely. Air never tasted so good. I looked at nothing as I breathed in and out over and over again, the wonderful sensation only dampened by a few pained shrieks from nearby. When I pulled myself together I saw that Demitri had been knocked to the ground and Dylan stood over him, beating the last bits of his life with my baseball bat.

Only when I started crying harder did I realize that I was crying in the first place.

_Demitri's dead._

_Dylan saved me._

_Dylan killed Demitri._

_I'm alive._

I coughed and hiccuped at the same time. I looked down and saw that some of the boils lining his arms had burst, and a dark green gas rose from them. For a fleeting moment of panic I was afraid it was poisonous but it only scratched my throat and caused me to cough again.

I looked at Dylan's back. His shirt was shredded, revealing nasty red slash marks where red blood oozed from and dried, probably causing his shirt to stick to him. It looked like it really hurt, but if it did he didn't show it on his face whenever he turned around, and somehow that made me feel a little better about my own injuries that I was afraid to look at.

Cool blue eyes stared down on me for a moment, and his mouth twisted as if there were a million things he wanted to say, but all that came out was, "Let's go."

I knew there were a million things _I _wanted to say, but I only agreed and took off my other boot. By the time we reached the kitchen, the feet of my white stockings were soaked in blood.

I asked Dylan how he managed to kill the remainder of the hoard on his own, but he told me he had help. When I asked what happened to them, he told me that they died very quickly without a weapon. The way he said it, he made it seem so simple. And maybe it was, but it still managed to provoke a semi-emotional reaction from me. There were no infected in the kitchen, so he took the time to give me my bat back and take away the ammo bag. He never asked me to hold it again.

I watched as Dylan opened the steel door to the walk-in freezer, and was met with a blast of cold air. I shivered, bringing my arms around myself, and looked at Dylan. _"You-can't-be-serious" _must have been written all over my face because he made a gesture to the inside with one hand and said, "Ladies first."

"We'll freeze," I said. And we would, if we were in there for too long. "and there's no way to get out from the other side."

"This door is nearly solid steel. I doubt any of the zombies could get us from the other side. I would rather freeze than be torn to shred," he replied without missing a beat. "And if we need to get out, there's an emergency latch right here." After a brief look, I saw he was right. Again.

I remembered a news story about a woman who died after being trapped in one of these things for five hours. "Can't we turn the freezer off?" I asked. He shrugged.

"I don't know how. If it gets too cold we can make _brief _trips outside. I'm willing to bet this is the safest place we can be in this school and in this situation."

I considered it for a few brief moments, recalled the situation with Demitri, and reluctantly agreed. "Okay," I mumbled, and walked inside. "Okay."

The door closed after Dylan walked inside, and immediately he began stacking up boxes against the door that swung inward. I watched him curiously but said nothing, shivering in the sub zero temperature. I looked around— only one light hung overhead, and it was dim. Frozen patties, fish sticks, strange meat products I didn't recognize lined the shelves, and more assorted frozen goods I didn't recognize lined the shelves.

There was also a lot of ice.

Ice.

_Water._

I was thirsty. I only realized it then. Immediately I scraped up a bunch of ice chips in my hands with the intention of popping them into my mouth, until I saw my hands. They were caked with dried blood, infected and my own, with fresh scabs forming over the cuts in my fingers. Frowning, I rubbed the ice chips in between my hands, letting them melt into water before I started to scrape the gunk and filth off. The wounds stung as I touched them, but it faded away with the relief of cool water washing out the injuries. It took a few handfuls, but eventually my hands were clean enough to touch things with. I shoved a whole handful of ice in my mouth, my throat screaming in joy of feeling some sort of hydration.

Dylan stopped moving boxes of frozen meat patties around, and I paused to consider how torn up the back of his shirt was. I half expected him to take it off like the macho men did in the movies, but thankfully he knew better than to take any form of clothing off when locked in a _freezer_. If the infected didn't kill us, this would.

"This hurts," he hissed, sitting against the wall next to the door. I had to agree. Pain practically crawled underneath my skin, and I was thankful that my tolerance for it was high. Still, it sucked. I bit down on my knuckles and sat against the wall opposite of him. I only hoped that the cold would eventually numb the pain.

"How long are we going to stay here?" I mumbled against my fist. He shrugged. I was getting tired of seeing him shrug.

"I don't know. As long as we need to. Until we can leave the building, I guess."

"I see..."

Dylan muttered something about it being best that we kept moving in an environment like this and began pacing around the small space, but I kept still. Truth be told, I wanted to break. I wanted to cry break down. My best friend was an infected, and now he was dead. It was for the best, but that's what sucked about it. I didn't know what was happening to my mom or dad, or anyone else I knew. My entire world was ending and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I wanted to scream and shout and cry and throw objects and hit Dylan and curl up in a ball and scream.

But I didn't. Not then. Dylan may have saved my life, but it still proved to be a difficult task opening up to him. We didn't really have time for that, anyway.

Finally Dylan sat back down, in the exact spot he was before. He brought his knees up to his chest, ran a hand through his dark brown hair and sighed. "This sucks."

A painful smile twisted onto my lips. "Yeah," I said. "This sucks."


	6. red crescent marks

**A/N: K, I have nothing much to say other than OH MY GOD. THIS WAS A BITCH TO WRITE. Despite it's shortness.**

**Oh, wait, there is another thing. As much as it warms my heart that a few of you have actually put this on alert and FAVORITED this story (SERIOUSLY!), the happy feeling kinda fades whenever you do that and then fail to review. I'm all like, wat. You like it enough to favorite it but not enough to get a little more personal and review it? You sicken me... not really, but THREE OF YOU did that. I have half the mind to type your names right here and call yo out PUBLICLY, but I won't. Just know this: if anyone else favorites my story and doesn't review... I'll... I'll... I'LL DO SOMETHING, OKAY? *threatening glare* **

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Five**  
_red crescent marks_

My eyes followed Dylan as he paced back and forth, over and over again. The freezer was narrower than it was wide, and his movements never changed. He'd start from the cardboard boxes piled against the door, walk ten steps, then spin around at his heel before he reach the opposite wall where I sat, always turning at least a foot away from me. Occasionally he would sit down in silence, but not long after he would be standing back up and marching around again. The ritual might have been funny, but whenever he said people survived longer in colder environments if they could move around made me wonder if I should have been moving around, too. I sat with my knees tucked up to my chest, shivering. I couldn't care less that this was a bad position to be in wearing a skirt... though my legs were cold.

Everything was very cold.

"Why are we here?" I finally asked, breaking the silence that hung over the two of us. Dylan didn't say much after he locked us in here and ensured that nobody else could get in from the outside should they use the handle. He paused mid step an d his eyes flickered to me before he started pacing again.

"Would you rather be out there?"

I bit back the sarcastic comment that threatened to fly off my lips, and sighed instead. I watched as my breath formed a little white cloud in front of my face, and it reminded me of the chilly morning when I was walking to school, convinced it would be a mostly ordinary day. Obviously, that wasn't the case.

I gazed at my surroundings and scrunched up my nose at almost everything I saw. I hated the freezer. It was maybe three feet wide, and you could only walk about ten paces before being stopped by the wall I sat against. Shelves covered the upper walls to my left and right, filled with boxes of meats and large bags of frozen vegetables and even a few tubs of ice cream. Boxes also lined the walls underneath the shelves, though several had been moved by Dylan. On it's own, it was a ton of food, at least a lot more than you would expect to be in the freezer of a normal high school. The lunch ladies had literally thousands of kids to feed everyday at Stuyvesant. I couldn't blame them for stocking up.

"So, um..."

The silence was killing me. The cold was killing me. These _fucking gashes _on my _back _were killing me, though I couldn't pinpoint the exact location of any of them. It felt as if the pain was everywhere on my back, though it had numbed. Which was great, but not if I froze to death.

"You got a... family?" Oh, Jesus, I was playing twenty questions with this guy, that's what I had been reduced to. And what a stupid question, too.

I didn't want to say "You got friends?" because obviously he didn't have many, and if he did, they were dead.

I was also thinking about my mom and dad. They were something big I could lose, and for all I knew, probably already loss. I wouldn't ever admit it then, but I might have asked that stupid question because I wanted someone to sympathize, _empathize _with in this desperate situation, and to talk about it before I lost myself worrying quietly to myself.

Dylan sighed, and he sat down again in the middle of the "room", his back towards me and his legs crossed. He bit one of us his filthy fingernails and looked up at the ceiling, and his head was tilted at an angle that I could see his lips moving, but no words came out.

After several moments I thought he wasn't going to answer me, but right after I opened my mouth to fill the void of silence once more he said, "I have a sister."

A pause.

I tilted my head to the side slightly. "A sister? And a mom or dad?"

"I have a sister," he said again. He never turned to face me when he spoke.

"Oh..." I could feel another long silence was threatening to overpower the room once more, so I asked, "What's she like?"

There might have been a ghost of a smile when he said, "She's six. Loves animals, even the ones most consider gross or disgusting. So optimistic and happy it gets annoying." He laughed quietly to himself, but his eyes were still downcast. "She means a lot to me." He paused, then turned his head to look at me. "What about you? Siblings?"

I shook my head. "Only child," I said plainly. "You'd think my dad was my older brother, though, the way he acts."

"I can sympathize," Dylan said, but his words were cold. "Some people never grow up."

I shivered, though I was unsure if it was because of the horribly cold temperature or because of Dylan's cryptic tone. My eyes lingered on Dylan's back. His dark long sleeve was all but shredded at the back, red criss-crossed patterns covering the revealed skin, and some were still bleeding. Where it wasn't cut, the skin was bruised. The one wound stood out, though, was the deep gouge mark stretching from the edge of his neck to his lower ribcage, oozing slightly as his body began to work to harden into a scab. It looked dirty... and painful.

I cringed.

Dylan noticed.

"Are they bad?" he asked, and I didn't need to ask what he was referring to. Truth be told, I didn't want to look at the injuries any longer. That's how disgusting and terrible they looked. For a moment, I considered lying to him, so he could feel some form of relief, but I considered if it really was a different question altogether: _Are they as bad as they feel?_

"Yeah," I admitted, looking down. "they're bad."

He let out a low humming noise and turned his head away, never commenting on my injuries. That pissed me off to some degree that he couldn't even care to know how I felt. And I felt like hell. My legs were generally well off—my ankle only had a slight bruise from the fall I took and my knees were mildly scraped—but my top was an entirely different story. There were no scars on my front... they never got close enough if I could see them. But my wrists had several nasty gashes and I didn't want to think about what covered my back, if it would be just like Dylan's or perhaps worse. I didn't ask him to take a look because I was afraid of what he would say.

A few more minutes passed, and my ass was cold. I was sitting on cold concrete with nothing to cover my legs except for a plaited skirt and stained stockings.

"We need to turn off the freezer," I said irritably, but a question lingered in the air—_how_ are we going to turn off the freezer? We'd have to go out into the kitchen, and neither of us were willing to search for a thermostat that we didn't even know the location of. Neither of us could think of an answer that we wanted to hear.

Dylan opened his mouth, but was cut off by a noise at the door: the sound of some of the cardboard boxes sliding an inch out of place. Both of our heads snapped up and we heard someone curse foully, and then a loud banging on the reinforced steel.

"Hey! Is anybody in there?"

I knew from the look on his face that Dylan and I found the same answer.

"Can you let us in? Please?" It was a feminine voice this time, her voice high with a mixture of desperation and relief.

_Dunno what she's so relieved about yet, _I thought, and admittedly I felt a little evil. I stood next to him with my arms folded across my chest, but ready to help push the door shut should we need to.

"I don't know," Dylan said, narrowing his eyes. He leaned over the boxes and pressed his hands against the door in case the boxes failed to do their job. "How many of you are there?"

There was a small pause, and I guessed someone was doing a quick head count.

"Six," the male voice that had spoken first said.

"Can six more people even fit in here?" I wondered aloud.

Dylan shrugged. "Maybe. Probably not comfortably."

_"Come on!" _

"Okay, okay," Dylan said to the young man, or maybe it was a full grown man. It was hard to tell, his voice was really deep. "We'll let you in, but first you have to turn it off."

"Turn it off?"

"The freezer," I said impatiently. "You need to turn it off or we're all going to freeze."

"Can't you let the rest of us in while one of us does that?" the female said this time.

Dylan and I looked at each other.

"No," we said in unison.

The crowd behind the door grumbled to themselves and cursed loudly, and I was worried for a moment that they wouldn't go through with this until a different girl's voice spoke up above the commotion and said, "Guys, I know where the controls are for the freezer, and I wouldn't want to go alone anyway. Let's go."

The grumblings faded as the over five people followed her, but they didn't leave before the man's voice nearly hollered at us. "You better keep your end of the deal!"

_I don't care if that door is made of steel, _I thought. _If he attracts zombies to the door being noisy like that, I'm going to be pissed._

Then, silence once more.

Dylan pulled away from the door, letting his arms drop to his side. He took a seat on one of the cardboard boxes that weren't stack so high as the others and I watched as he began biting his dirty fingernails again.

"Stop doing that," I chided without completely realizing. "It's gross."

Immediately his eyes flicked to my hands, covered with chipped black nail polish but obviously gnawed on at the edges. "You do it," he accused.

"Yeah, but not when my hands are covered in blood and all sorts of other nasty shit," I said and he frowned. "You should really try to wash it off."

"It's just going to come back anyway whenever we have to leave this place," he argued.

"It's _nasty. _If you're not going to try to clean it off, then at least don't bite your nails. It's unsanitary."

He looked straight into my eyes and took a big bite out of his pinky's fingernail before ripping it off completely with his teeth, deliberately slow.

_Oh you son of a bitch—_

"Whatever," I said with a scowl, then turned around and walked back to my wall. "Whatever."

I sat down. Dylan stayed seated, too, not bothering to resume his marching around this icebox. My eye started twitching when I realized he was twirling the broken fingernail around between his teeth as he stared thoughtfully at the ground.

"The thing," he said suddenly, but he didn't meet my eyes. "with the tongue."

I felt a lump rising in my throat.

"Yeah?" I choked out.

He paused and turned his head to the side. Looking anywhere but at me.

"He was... your friend, wasn't he?"

My fingernails dug into my palms, my teeth bit down on the insides of my cheek, and my eyes were at battle fighting back tears. Get a hold of yourself. Get a hold of yourself, Jacky. It's just a question. _It's just a fucking question._

"Yeah," I said, so quietly I could hardly believe I heard myself.

He said nothing for a while, and I wondered if he had heard me. It didn't matter.

I was wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand when I heard him say, "I'm sorry."

Red crescent marks lined my palms as my fingers relaxed, before they curled up again.

_Sorry won't bring anyone back! _a voice inside me screamed.

"It doesn't matter," I said calmly. "He changed, and you did what you had to do."

"Are we doing the right thing?"

The question caught me off guard, and after I processed it a few times, I almost laughed. If anything, I expected that I would be asking myself that question, but I definitely did not expect the guy who planned on shooting me anyone else close by to ask _me. _For that moment, the roles were reversed. I was the cool head if not slightly unsympathetic and he was the one asking the desperate questions with his head hung low and a million emotions shining in his eyes.

I looked straight at him. "It doesn't matter if it's the right thing. Like you said, we have to look after ourselves. We're going to have to think about what's best for us before we think about the other people if we want to survive."

He nodded to himself. I breathed out through my lips. I wasn't worried about him not heeding his own words, but I had issues trusting myself not to do something that could jeopardize my life. It's not like I fed the homeless people on the streets everyday, but I felt needles shoot through my heart whenever I saw the other students die and felt like a monster when I didn't help them.

It was suddenly quieter than usual. I looked up.

The cold air stopped blowing from the vent above my head.

"Looks like they did it," Dylan said, then he looked at the boxes. "Are you sure we should let them in?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "They helped us. Now we can help them."

"Just saying..."

He began moving the boxes back their original spots before the group of six even returned, and I was reminded again of who Dylan McKeizel was. My hands curled to fists at my sides and I let him move the barricade on his own, never stopping to offer help.

"Turns out we had the same idea," a girl even shorter than me with mousy brown hair and black rimmed glasses said with a smile. I recognized her as the female voice who had spoken up, saying she knew where the thermostat was.

I tried to smile back. "Yeah," I said. "It was really Dylan's idea, though."

"Good thing there's at least a few nooks to hide in around here," she said thoughtfully as she stepped inside the slowly warming freezer, and five others followed. Three girls, three boys. I thought it was really weird that there was such an even gender ratio, but I didn't comment. It was stupid anyway.

The five other survivors were all students and were mute as they filed inside, some lugging around backpacks and a few even holding metal bars that looked as if it once held up a shelf in a classroom, but now served as something to keep zombies at bay. One guy who might have been a prep even had a cricket paddle.

But the skinny girl with glasses had something different entirely— a small, cordless radio.

They walked in, flung their bags down, and sat down in the middle of the floor, murmuring to each other and sneaking cautious looks at the unfamiliar faces. The huddled against the walls underneath the shelf and Dylan migrated from his spot by the door to the middle of the wall to my right. I still claimed the back wall, and a feeling of petty possessiveness rose up in me whenever someone got too close. This was _my _wall.

"What are you doing?" the boy with spiked blonde hair and baby face said when the brunette began fiddling with the radio as she lay on her stomach, twisting the knob and trying to distinguish clear words from the static.

"Looking for a channel," she said, and continued twisting the knob as if the attention of the entire room wasn't on her by now. I knew that mine was.

"Yeah, Ida. Music is going to do us a _lot _of good right now," the blonde sneered as he kicked his stained white-on-white Nikes off and threw his cricket paddle to the side, but took a seat beside her despite his harsh words.

I of all people knew that tempers were running high. Dylan and I had been snapping at each other and trading sarcastic remarks whenever the other made a mistake. Maybe Ida and this prep—or maybe everyone—were the same way.

"I'm not looking for music, Chris," Ida said calmly, _politely _even. "I'm trying to find the emergency channel."

… or maybe it had nothing to do with the situation, and I was just acting like the bipolar bitch I am and Dylan's just a caustic bastard.

"Oh," said Chris. "Sorry."

Hell, he even _apologized_. My eyebrows slowly raised as I watched the exchange and the musings continued for a little while longer until the persistent crackling of the radio stopped, and a clear voice filled the air of the walk-in freezer.

"Found it," Ida said triumphantly. Chris shushed her and turned the volume to the radio up as everyone leaned in to listen to the man's voice coming from the speakers.

_"-stay indoors. Citizens should not travel outdoors unarmed. Keep contact with infected individuals limited until you reach the evacuation center at Central Park. Repeat, the evacuation center is at Central Park. The military is in the process of quarantining New York City and CEDA can only remove citizens from the area for a short time. Emergency supplies will be dropped at specific places in different districts but they won't be prepared until tomorrow morning. Until fully armed __**do not **__leave the safety of your home—__"_

Ida turned the radio off, seemingly speechless.

"Emergency equipment?" a girl who's voice I didn't recognize from before spoke. Her red hair was thick and hung above her slim shoulders, framing a thin face with narrowed eyes and thin lips. "They mean like, guns?"

"Yeah, I guess so." someone else, a boy, said. "Looks like we should stay here until tomorrow.

My lips twitched. "We're going to have to sleep here?"

"There's plenty of food," Dylan chimed in, ignoring me. "though most of it is likely to go bad. There might be enough stuff in here that should be able to eat without cooking before it spoils. Maybe."

Everyone shifted uncomfortably at that. The redhead stared and Dylan and I accusingly for some reason, and I looked away. So far I've decided that Ida was fine, Chris was okay, but the three others had been mostly mute, and now the redhead's eyes wouldn't leave me.

"Hey, there should be enough," Dylan assured. "Even if there isn't, it's not like we're going to die if we miss dinner."

"What about after we leave here?" a girl with droopy blonde pigtails asked. She was the one who had asked _"Can you let us in? Please?" _all sweet and pitifully.

"Figure it out," Dylan said, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes. "That's none of my concern."

Everyone looked around, immediately breaking any awkward eye contact. The situation was only growing worse. I was in an icebox full of people who hardly knew each other and perishable food items. There were god knows how many zombies just outside that steel door waiting to rip my innards out. I was going to have to endure several long hours of awkward interactions with schoolmates I haven't seen before in my life only to sleep on the cold concrete floor without a blanket or pillow. The food was going to be soggy and cold.

I sighed, but something pink on the shelf caught my eye and I almost smiled. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that that carton of strawberry ice cream was mine.


End file.
